In Grayson we 'still' trust?

A lot of doubt has crept in over the last few months and when the results have gone against us, the Leeds United fans have reacted in our usual emotional, knee-jerk way, by calling for the managers head. A far cry from the ‘In Grayson we trust’ trend possibly caused by yours truly earlier in the season. (TSS Twitter followers will no doubt remember the ill-fated #IGWT craze)

Even now the form has picked up a little – albeit with a minor blip at Gillingham – and promotion is ours to lose once more, some fans still think Grayson should be replaced at the end of the season. Whilst I can’t deny mistakes have been made, isn’t this the price you pay for a young manager? You have to accept his learning curve as part of the deal, so surely we should stand by our former ‘saviour?’

It’s with that in mind, I thought I’d open a new TSS recurring poll where you select the current confidence level you have in the boss. I’ll leave it open for a week, average the score out and eventually we’ll be left with a percentage that I’ll announce towards the end of the month. I’ll run the same poll periodically so we can see how confidence in the management changes over time. Genius, huh? (Not even a little bit stolen from election polls – honest!)

Unless Larry does something different and dramatic that gets us the results we crave then I am in the get new manager camp.
Well I must say this is better than discussing caves and mysterious billionaires.
Thanks TSS

Graysons’ time is about to come…he’s got 3 games to either lose or keep his job…shame; but that’s football for you.

Nevermind…being a football manager is the only job in the world where you can make an absolute f__k up and still get another job the following week on the same money! And they talk about ‘pressure’…what crap!!

Either way Grayson will be alright.

Let’s hope we get promotion.

Peter

How old is Simon Grayson? Don Revie was 33 when he became manager of Leeds, 36 when they were promoted from the old division 2.

There have been too many mistakes; not strengthening the squad in January, acquiring the services of Macthingy and Dickov, retaining the same team week in week whether they are performing or not, not resting key players for matches eg in the JPT, telling the team and the world that Beckford’s goals would carry us to promotion, not giving potential players a proper chance etc etc.. A lot of apparent mistakes there, can he learn from them, whatever league Leeds are in next year?

cossie(LUFC)

I like Grayson but amn not convinced he has the bottle for the job. Tough decisions were not made when they should have been and even to this day I cannot understand why Prutton wasn’t in the team week i week out. When the wobble came in the new year surely players like Robinson, Kandol, Rui, Grella and others should have been given more of a shout (I don’t mean all at once but these players should have been given more than just 5 minutes here and there). What’s the story with Somma as well, I know it’s a lower league but he seemed to be scoring for fun at the same time we couldn’t buy a goal, maybe he would have warrented a place on the bench. Agree with earlier posts about the likes of macS and Dickov, just don’t see the point.
Now I don’t know what is going on behind the scenes and maybe Grayson has his hands tied by Papa Smurf but it seems a little like the Blamewell days of player cliques to me

MOT

Johnny Giles

Grayson might have 6 games to keep his job… they wont get rid of him after 3 games when its still all to play for. Get behing the team, one game at a time

mikelufc

I think we are all behind the Team Johnny, the doubt appears when we start to think he will pick to start, who he will put on the bench, will he make the right substitutions, will he have them revved up and ready to fight for their lives, not like the shanbles at Gills.

Mark R

Interesting post TSS.

I tend to think SG will take us up and then there will be significant changes in the squad. I think the inconsistency has been a combination of him learning management at a bigger club than he’s ever managed at , and also the quality of player we have in the squad.

I’m sure he’ll have learnt much over the last year – about himself and about the players handling of the pressure of expectation from ourselves.

We’ll be promoted in a couple of weeks , and as a results based business , the facts will be SG delivered with the resources he had.

We’ll then watch the World Cup, build sand castles at Scarborough, speculate about Summer transfers and be all refreshed and optimistic again for the start of the new season.

Can i borrow your rose-tinted spectacles as i lost mine at the gills game! I hope everything you say will come true but no-doubt there’ll be some more twists and turns on the LUFC rollercoaster before the season ends!

TheReaper08

Come on Louis it wouldn’t be Leeds if we did it the easy way would it !

Gotta have optimism otherwise what else is there !

TheReaper08

An excellent question TSS and right on the cusp of possibly the most important three games of our modern times.

For me I see a lot of positives and dare I say it some negatives from his tenure as Leeds boss. The question I continue to ask is are the negatives something I find acceptable for a relatively junior manager still finding his feet in the managerial world, for me the answer is yes. Many so called more established and more succesful managers have made bigger mistakes and gone on to have very succesful top flight careers.

The manager and the squad have my full support until this season is decided, I will update my opinion then.

Mark R

Good points on established managers making errors Mr.Reaper.
I agree.

Grumpy Older Man

The concept of “trust” is so unreal when discussing football managers I barely register its except to diss the IGWT mob as some form of robotic existance devoid of free will. The whole concept was always self-defeating but even my cynical viewpoint never saw it expolding quite the way it did. Grayson’s range, as proved by his 4 seasons of management is 15th in the championship downwards. His natural celling IMHO is 2 L1 promotions over a 20 year career, but proberbly not 2 in 4 seasons. If you want a manager to compete in the CCC and work in the PL Grayson is not your man. At the start of the season I said there was no point ever sacking Grayson so long as Bates was doing the hiring, my view now is either we stick with that position (and the erratic playing style that comes with it) or just sack the manager every time we don’t go up. Not good for stability I know but what has stability got to do with LUFC!

Roger

Simon grayson is the right man for the job if we get promoted we will do it back to back be in the premiership 2011

timm

Blimey Roger! i’ll have a pint of what you’ve had!

brad

there is talk of david batty taking over as manager, would be interesting!

Craig

Who is doing the talking? His Mum + Dad?

Tony Currie’s Curler

I think Grayson overall has proved to be a decent manager, and probably the best we’ve had since the early day’s of O’leary.

I could see why he signed McSheffery, it was a gamble but most transfers good or bad are gambles. Dicov was silly, unless he thought he’d be good to have around the training ground. There was never any hope he was going to be a first choice striker.

Blackpool was never going to have similar pressure than Leeds. So it’s been a bit of a learning curve for him too and he’ll be the better manager for it next year. Who ever he’s mananging.

I think the players have to take some responsability. I think their heads were turned and increased in size after the FA Cup run and believed they could just turn up to some games. That’s a dificult thing for a manager to sort out.

These next three games are about state of mind as much as tactics or management skills. And with the extra pressure the players are under just because it’s Leeds. I like Grayson and I think he’ll prove to be a very good manager. He’ll make less mistakes next year and know his players better. I say stick by him

timm

Totally agree TCC, it’s definately about state of mind now. I actually think that he may find the job easier if we’re in the CCC next season. He won’t have the same level of expectation on him in our first season if we go up. Also, providing we get some better quality players in during the summer he’ll be able to watch the team actually put into practice the stuff they learn on the training ground.

Craig

This is an interesting reflection. I hope its true.

Yorkshrman

Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing …..???!!

For myself, I’ve always thought we over-achieved in the first half of the season – no-one who was at the Norwich game at ER could have failed to see the gulf in class between them and us. They are, and have been, head and shoulders above everyone else in L1.

Second half, we’ve under-achieved. But if, instead of losing 1 out of the first 23, we’d lost 4 or 5 (as we could easily have done), but still been in the position we are now, the noises would have been very different …..

Is it all about money? As I said on another thread, look at Southampton, given the money they’ve spent. Look at Huddersfield, come to that; they’ve spent a damn sight more in transfers than we have. It don’t guarantee nuffink …..

So, is Grayson the right man? I don’t know the answer to that. But I do think that yet another managerial change this Summer would be a Bad Thing. This club needs a bit of stability, and I fear that, whichever league we’re in, a change would not augur well for next season.

Craig

I have said it before, but will repeat for this page that I think Simon Grayson has done pretty well this season. Yes we got the rub of the green before Christmas and won some games with more than our fare share of luck – although I don’t agree that we were second best against Norwich at ER. In my opinion we were very slightly better (certainly the Norwich fans I watched it with thought we deserved the 3 points).

I am convinced that on January 1st 2010 Grayson was right not to go crazy in the transfer market and that, apart from Dickov, his loan signings in the window looked good on paper. I’m also convinced that the decline was due to Beckford putting in a transfer request before the Man U game, and that Grayson was correct to keep playing him, believing that he had a point to prove to potential suitors. I do think he should have stopped playing Beckford from a start a few games before he did but hindsight is a wonderful thing – and Becchio wasn’t fully fit either. Finally, most of the time Grayson’s substitutions have made sense (unlike Sven, Benitez and others) and his half-time team talks have delivered a better second half performance. Surely this illustrates that Grayson has a degree of tactical nouse?

Sure, Grayson has made mistakes – but we have no guarantee that the players cited above could have done any better or proof that a greater degree of team rotation would have been beneficial. I think he will learn from this season and I hope he gets us promoted and stays.

Henry V

Apart from Norwich, Charlton and Southampton we have a better & bigger squad than all the others.
With the start we had we should have been safe in the top two and well clear by now.
Our collapse is incredible. Most good teams stutter for a few games, but our nose dive has gone on for months.
Simon and his staff are as mystified as the rest of us and do not have the know how to stop it.
I pray we can win the next three games, but I am not confident we can.
Too many players are hiding but I really hope the big crowds lift them, and carry them to glory!!

Come on the boys!!!

Henry.

Yorkshrman

…. so we should really be 4th??? Charlton have looked pretty iffy for most of the season, and Saints have been very up and down. Yet you think both have “bigger and better” squads than us …….?

Terry

i would be more inclined to see what grayson is made of during the summer, promotion or not, because eiher way players will be coming and going, when beckford goes, not at least attempting to bring in hooper would be idiotic, plus we need a solid centre half if kisnorbo is out till october..and a cretive right winger so snodgrass can stick to his natural side…bring in 3-4 key players or we will struggle to stick the pace again, in either division

Matt bb

We do indeed have on paper a squad which would do well in the ccc, but sitting and looking at the harsh reality of our precarious position we just arent living up to this hype. I think the beckford saga was one of several gambles grayson took that didnt work out. On the other hand he has got us into the automatic places, my view is that hes an inexperienced manager, who we need to stick with as he will get us out of league one.

Mikelufc

Amazing how we all experience different realities, I
I am astonished at Craigs view above.
Any manager who can organise the Gills fiasco is inept in my view.

Craig

The Gills fiasco wasn’t organised – we were simply caught with a series of sucker punches following individual errors. It happens to every team because football thrives on confidence.

The response to pull 2 goals back was the result of (re)organisation.

That’s the difference.

Benjamin Bunny

I’d say everyone leafns from there mistakes, keep him. He will be a better manager for the mistakes he has made in the past with us. The longer he’s with us the better, look at teams like Arsenal and Scum Utd, there managers have been there for years and built up an entire club. Let Grayson have the power to do that.
We don’t need a new person to come in and have to start from scratch again and get to know what everyones weakness and strong point, waste of time. Grayson all the way, every club has bad times, especially bad times when we slat the manager, what we tend to forget is that were in 2cd position, so not too bad really.

Mikelufc

No one has forgotten the position we are in Benjamin
but we have also not forgotten how those places change and how rapidly.
We are o e point above the playoffs……. And we all remember our record there, larry HD the possibility to fire up our lads last week to put us four points clear and he failed.

Matt BB

look over the border to wales.. Dave Jones will have the best opportunity for cardiff to get into the top flight based generally on his longevity there, stability is vital. He could have been sacked last season, and further west – swansea, got rid of kenny jackett and he is millwalls main asset now. We need to be realistic, and stop expecting to go up every season. Stablity and knowing your team is invaluable, Grayson has shown more than lfashes of tactical nous, and yes he has had some very bad days at the office. Not giving him a propoer chance though is extremely short sighted. All I would say is that we should be thinking bout getting him some real support, a george graham or a Stan Ternent to help him with his day to day management. Thats missing at the moment and may be the reason we fall down against veterans like Danny Wilson, Kenny Jackett and so on who know all the old chestnuts about what young managers do and have so blatantly taken us to bits.

timm

Interesting point about needing an ‘old head’ at his side Matt, i’m pretty sure he had Roy Evans with him at Blackpool? I seem to remember that Evans chose to stay on over there as he lived nearby & his wife was very ill with cancer? Someone else may know better than me?

Matt BB

I seem to remember it was Tony Parkes, who refused to join him at Leeds, he was the chap who always caretaker managed at Blackburn! I think he is still there assisting Ian Holloway.. THey seem to be doing alright..

timm

Yep that’s right Matt, i,m getting old! Definately an old wise head who played a major part in their promotion season though. I definately agree that he’d benefit from having someone like that around the place. Eddie Gray perhaps?

Matt BB

Definitely Eddie Gray would be brilliant to have in the team.

Old Billy White

If Grayson is sacked, who will replace him and with what guarantee of success? Do we want another change of manager, how many is it, about 8 in 8 years? Or do we want stability? I know one thing I want to get promoted this time, and improve the squad for next year. As everyone on here says mistakes have been made, and maybe this decline should have been tackled earlier. I’m not a huge fan of short term loan players coming straight into the team, leap-froging over squad players. (e.g. Vokes, over Grella, Kandol etc.) I think it’s bad for team /squad spirit.
However 3 wins and we’ll all be laughing!

Mikelufc

So we have stability at the moment do we Billy?
You could have fooled me.